An Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe/Chapter 4
CHAP. IV.
A parallel between the rise and decline of ancient and modern learning.
Few subjects have been more frequently and warmly debated, than the comparative superiority of the ancients and moderns. It is unaccountable how a dispute, so trifling, could be contested with so much virulence. A dispute of this nature, could have no other consequences, if decided, but to teach young writers to despise the one side or the other. A dispute, therefore, which, if determined, might tend rather to prejudice our taste, than improve it, should have been argued with good nature, as it could not with success. For mere critics to be guilty of such scholastic rage, is not uncommon, but for men of the first rank of fame to be delinquent also, is, I own, surprizing.
The reflecting reader need scarcely be informed, that this contested excellence can be decided in favour of neither. They have both copied from different originals, described the manners of different ages, have exhibited nature as they found her, and both are excellent in separate imitations. Homer describes his Gods as his countrymen believed them. Virgil, in a more enlightened age, describes his with a greater degree of respect; and Milton still rises infinitely above either. The machinery of Homer is best adapted to an unenlightened idolator; that of the Roman poet, to a more refined heathen; and that of Milton, to a reader illuminated by revelation. Had Homer wrote like Milton, his countrymen would have despised him; had Milton adopted the theology of the ancient bard, he had been truly ridiculous. Again, should I depreciate Plautus for not enlivening his pieces with the characters of a coquet, or a marquis, so humourous in modern comedy; or Moliere, for not introducing a legal bawd, or a parasitical boaster, so highly finished in the Roman poet; my censure in either case would be as absurd as his, who should dislike a geoprapher for not introducing more rivers, or promontories, into a country, than nature had given it; or the natural historian, for not enlivening his description of a dead landscape with a torrent, a cataract, or a volcano.
The parallel between antiquity and our selves can thrrefore be managed to advantage only by comparing the rise and progress of ancient and modern learning together, so that being appriz'd of the causes of corruption in one, we may be upon our guard against any similar depravations in the other.